Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Keeping It All in Perspective
When you're part of a competition band, and you seek to win competitions, it can be a bit disheartening when you don't. As Andrew Berthoff pointed out in a recent blog, one thing that you need to learn to do is lose contests, because you lose a lot more than you win, on average. In the past two years, the CRPB has learned a lot about losing competitions, because we have lost more than at any other time in the band's history. At a time when the overall Grade 2 standard is rising, ours fell drastically, and it has been a long road back, and the journey's not done yet.

One thing the digital age does for pipe bands, is put every performance into a context—how you compared to last time out, how you compare to the competition, and how you compare to the world standard. The most recent recording of the CRPB shows that we have come a very long way since this time last year, and that we have some distance to go yet. See for yourself.



There's a lot to criticize here, and no one is ripping it apart more enthusiastically than us, and you can bet that we'll be working to get this into what we hope it can be, and get people performing to the level that it will take to be more competitive in the grade.

The thing that makes this recording so great, is that you can see and hear a definitive change from previous recordings. It's getting better, and we're not half done yet. And if you're looking in from afar, keep in mind that very few of these players have ever played in a grade 2 band, and none are coming from great Grade 4 or 3 bands. These players are mostly coming from very basic Grade 4 bands, and they are working very hard to improve their game.



On the way home from Brandon, we turned in to Wapella, Saskatchewan, weaved through the town, and headed 10 minutes south to St. Andrew's Church, which was the heart of the Gaelic community that immigrated to Saskatchewan from South Uist and Benbecula in 1883 and after. They are known as the Lady Cathcart Settlers. In the late 1970s and early '80s, I was in close contact with Alan McDonald of Wapella, who was a descendant of the settlers. He used to bring a group of us out to the parish hall at St. Andrew's to perform each St. Andrew's Night in November, and in the summer, we organized a piping and drumming competition there for several years in conjunction with the annual summer sports day. We had solo piping, drumming, quartets, and even bands some years, and there was a group of Highland dancers from Moosomin who performed each year.

Over time, the games there faded. I moved to BC for a few years, and Alan moved on to other things. Sunday I stood at his grave, and Eilidh played "Lament for Mary MacLeod" in the churchyard, while we thought about Allan and Margaret McDonald, and all those pioneering Scots who left the Hebrides for life in Saskatchewan.

While we were putting the pipes back in the car, and getting ready to leave, another vehicle pulled up, and a family got out with some flowers for the graves. We struck up a conversation, and as it turned out, this was Alan's daughter and her family, out to tend to the family grave as a spring ritual.

And so, all the contest thoughts fall away. We'll be working hard to make a better job of the music that we play. At the same time, we'll be keeping in mind that there's more to this whole thing than the winning and losing.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Lessons Learned in Time
Back when this photo was taken [April 1993] this was an excellent turnout at a band practice. This was actually the band's first competition performance. We took five pipers and played four [as the rules stated we should for a mini band event], and we played all the drummers we had. In those days, we were elated to be able to field a band, and over the years, we gradually built on that, adding players, real uniforms, better instuments, etc.

The band had quite a few years of relative stability, especially in the pipe section, and we could often count on a good turnout at band. When there wasn't one, we tended to not really practice, go for beer, or just twiddle the time away.

When the band fell on hard times a couple of years ago in terms of player numbers and experience, it would have been easy to walk away from routinely dismal practices, where the numbers were low, and the energy even lower.

Last winter, I made the decision to use every practice to play hard with the people who were there, and mostly we have stuck to that. Today, we had a number of regular people away on other things: provincial volleyball, family meeting, daughter's violin recital, etc. and it's always tempting to give in to the "oh whatever," and instead we played hard. An hour of detail work on chanters [with a few jokes and stories] and then an hour or two of piping: setting chanters, working with reeds and pipes, and finally playing through all the contest music with the small number of drummers.

The cool part was: it was a really good practice, and we had some very good sound, and made progress on several fronts. Too bad that there weren't more there, but today's practice is going to make a difference. And in the end, that's why we go in the first place. Well, and for the jokes and stories too.

Part of the excitement for me are recent changes we have made to the music. Can hardly wait to get the whole team playing it at Brandon.